User:Cereflauta/Justo Gonzalo

Justo Gonzalo

Justo Gonzalo Rodríguez-Leal (Barcelona, Spain, 2 March 1910 - Madrid, Spain 28 September 1986), Spanish neuroscientist, characterized and interpreted what he called «central syndrome of the cortex» (bilateral and multisensory involvement). He developed a model of cerebral dynamics from the neurophysiological study of patients with cerebral lesions and based on biological laws of growth. The model highlights the functional unity of the cortex and offers a dynamic solution for the cerebral localizations by means of functional gradients along the cortex and scaling laws. He was awarded by the Spanish National Research Council in 1945, from the Spanish ‘Real Academia de Medicina’ in 1950 and by the Spanish Society of Psychology in 1958.

Early years
Justo Gonzalo lived in Barcelona until he attended the medical school of the University of Madrid, from which he graduated in 1933. With a grant from the ‘Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios’, he performed research work at the ‘Nervenklinik’ of the University of Vienna (1933-34) on clinical neurology and animal experimentation with H. Hoff, and on cytoarchitectonics of the cerebral cortex with O. Pötzl in the laboratory of C. von Economo. Later, his research focused on cerebral pathology at the ‘Nervenklinik’ of the Frankfurt University (1934-35) in collaboration with K. Kleist.

His first works belong to this period.